Southern Christian Leadership Conference

The 1955–56 bus boycott in Montgomery, AlabamaAlabamaAlabama is a U.S. state in the Southeast on the Gulf of Mexico, with its capital at Montgomery. It was admitted to the Union on December 14, 1819, as the 22nd state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 5,024,279 residents.Open the full entry, led to the organization’s formation. On January 10–11, 1957, ministers and civil rights leaders met at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta at a gathering called the Southern Negro Leaders Conference on Transportation and Nonviolent Integration, a name later changed to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The ministers who issued the call included C. K. Steele and Fred Shuttlesworth, and Bayard Rustin wrote the working papers.⁠[1][2]

A follow-up meeting was held on February 14, 1957, at New Zion Baptist Church in New Orleans. Martin Luther King Jr.Martin Luther King Jr.Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) was an American Baptist minister and social activist who led the U.S. civil rights movement from the mid-1950s until his assassination in 1968. He headed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.Open the full entry became the first president, working with colleagues including Ralph AbernathyRalph AbernathyRalph Abernathy (1926–1990) was an American Baptist pastor and civil rights leader who was Martin Luther King Jr.’s chief aide and closest associate in the 1950s and 1960s. He co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with King and led it as president from 1968, after King’s assassination, until 1977.Open the full entry, Fred Shuttlesworth, Septima Clark and Bayard Rustin. The organization’s mantra is “Saving the Soul of America,” and it sought to redeem “the soul of America” through nonviolent resistance.⁠[2][3][1][4]

An August 1957 conference laid the groundwork for the Crusade for Citizenship, launched in late 1957 to register voters for the 1958 and 1960 elections and continued into the early 1960s. That year the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, led by Fred Shuttlesworth and founded in Birmingham on June 5, 1956, after Alabama Attorney General John Patterson outlawed the NAACPNAACPThe NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) is an American civil rights organization founded in 1909, which the Library of Congress describes as the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization.Open the full entry in the state, became affiliated with the organization.⁠[1][5]

The Albany Movement in Albany, Georgia, began in December 1961, and the organization joined it; in July 1962 King and Abernathy were convicted for leading the December march. In 1962 the organization started Operation Breadbasket in Atlanta and the Citizenship Education Program.⁠[2][1]

At Fred Shuttlesworth’s invitation, King and the organization joined the “Project C” campaign in Birmingham in April and May 1963. Originally set for early March, it was postponed after Albert Boutwell defeated Eugene “Bull” Connor in a mayoral run-off and launched on April 3, 1963, with mass meetings, sit-ins, marches on City Hall and a boycott of downtown merchants; the “Birmingham Manifesto” is dated that day. On April 10 the city obtained a state circuit court injunction, which the leaders decided to disobey. On April 12, Good Friday, King was arrested for violating it and held in solitary confinement, where he wrote the “Letter from Birmingham Jail”; he was released on bail on April 20.⁠[5][6]

On May 2 more than 1,000 African American students tried to march downtown, and hundreds were arrested. On May 3 Connor directed the police and fire departments to use force, and images of fire hoses, police dogs and clubbings drew international outrage. On May 10 King, Abernathy and Shuttlesworth read an agreement providing for the removal of “Whites Only” and “Blacks Only” signs, desegregated lunch counters, upgraded Black employment, a biracial committee and the release of jailed protesters on bond. That night an explosive went off near the Gaston Motel, and the next day the home of King’s brother was bombed; President John F. KennedyJohn F. KennedyJohn F. Kennedy (1917–1963) was an American politician who represented Massachusetts in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate and served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 to 1963. The youngest person elected president and the first Roman Catholic to hold the office, he was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963.Open the full entry then ordered 3,000 federal troops into position near Birmingham.⁠[6]

The organization played a major role in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, at which King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.⁠[1]

On September 15, 1963, Ku Klux Klan members bombed Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, killing four girls; on September 18 King delivered the eulogy at the joint funeral of three of the victims.⁠[6]

In 1964 Andrew Young became the organization’s executive director. The organization also joined the local movement in St. Augustine, FloridaFloridaFlorida is a U.S. state occupying mainly the Florida peninsula, with its capital at Tallahassee; its most populous city is Jacksonville. It entered the Union on March 3, 1845, as the 27th state, and had a population of 21,538,187 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry, and its visibility helped lay the groundwork for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.⁠[2][1]

On January 2, 1965, King and the organization joined SNCC, the Dallas County Voters League and other local activists in a voting rights campaign in Selma, Alabama, where only about 2 percent of Black residents were registered to vote. On February 18 Alabama state troopers and local police broke up a night march in Marion, and a trooper shot Jimmie Lee Jackson, a 26-year-old church deacon, who died eight days later in a Selma hospital.⁠[7]

On March 7, 1965, “Bloody Sunday,” Hosea Williams and John LewisJohn Lewis (civil rights leader)John Lewis (1940–2020) was an American civil rights leader and politician. He chaired the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee from 1963 to 1966, led the 1965 “Bloody Sunday” march in Selma, Alabama, and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1986, representing Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District for more than thirty years.Open the full entry led marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where troopers and local lawmen attacked them with clubs and tear gas. On March 9 King led more than 2,000 marchers to the bridge, where they knelt in prayer and turned back; that evening local whites attacked James Reeb, a white Unitarian minister, who died two days later. On March 15 President Lyndon B. JohnsonLyndon B. JohnsonLyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) was an American politician who served Texas as a U.S. representative and senator and led the Senate Democrats, became vice president in 1961 and succeeded to the presidency on the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, serving as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. His administration enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other “Great Society” legislation while expanding the U.S. military commitment in the Vietnam War.Open the full entry addressed Congress in a televised speech supporting the demonstrators, and on March 17 he submitted voting rights legislation. On March 16 Judge Frank M. Johnson approved a permitted march and barred Governor Wallace and local law enforcement from harassing the marchers.⁠[7]

On March 21 the federally protected march left Selma, guarded by federalized Alabama National Guardsmen and agents of the Federal Bureau of InvestigationFederal Bureau of InvestigationThe Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the federal investigative agency of the U.S. Department of Justice. It grew out of a force of special agents organized by Attorney General Charles J. Bonaparte in 1908, has used its present name since 1935 and is headquartered in Washington, D.C.Open the full entry, with the judge’s order limiting the group on the highway to 300 people. On March 25 the marchers reached the capitol in Montgomery, where the crowd numbered about 25,000 on the final day and King gave the closing address; that night Viola Liuzzo, a MichiganMichiganMichigan is a state of the United States nearly surrounded by the Great Lakes and made up of the Upper and Lower peninsulas; its capital is Lansing and its largest city is Detroit. It was admitted to the Union on January 26, 1837, as the 26th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 10,077,331.Open the full entry volunteer ferrying marchers back to Selma, was shot and killed by four Ku Klux Klan members. On August 6, 1965, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in the presence of King and other civil rights leaders.⁠[7]

In 1966 Operation Breadbasket spread to Chicago as part of the Chicago Campaign, and that year a voter registration drive in Hancock County, Georgia, enfranchised many citizens. Planning for the Poor People’s Campaign began in 1967.⁠[1][2]

King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, crippling the organization’s momentum, and Ralph Abernathy became president. Under his leadership about 3,000 people camped in Washington, D.C., from May 13 to June 24, 1968.⁠[1][2]

In 1970 Andrew Young resigned to run for Congress. In 1977 Abernathy resigned to run for Congress, and Joseph Lowery became president. In 1997 Lowery retired, and Martin Luther King III became the organization’s leader.⁠[2]

Fred Shuttlesworth became interim president in November 2003, was elected president in August 2004 and resigned about three months later; Charles Steele Jr. was elected president in November 2004 and served until 2009. Bernice King, elected president in 2009, announced in January 2011 that she would not take the post after failing to reach agreement with the board on its terms. In July 2011 president Howard Creecy died in office. In April 2012 C. T. Vivian replaced Isaac Farris as interim president, and in July 2012 Steele returned as president. In May 2012 the organization’s records from 1968 to 2007 opened at Emory University.⁠[2]

Charles Steele, who had worked with the organization for more than 20 years and served two terms as president and CEO, announced his departure in early August 2024. On August 10, 2024, the organization’s 65th annual convention elected its national vice president, DeMark Liggins, as president and CEO. Liggins had been with the organization for more than 10 years as chief financial officer and then chief of staff, and was named national vice president at the 64th convention in 2023; he is a graduate of Alabama State University.⁠[8][9]

As of November 2026 the organization’s president and CEO was DeMark Liggins.⁠[4]

Southern Christian Leadership Conference: Official website: https://nationalsclc.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[4]